This course will trace what happened to rhetoric during various literary historical eras in order to demonstrate how an awareness of rhetorical theory can lead to a fuller appreciation of literary poetics during those eras. The course will have two major parts. In the first part, about half the semester, we will first investigate the rhetoric/poetics nexus via considering primarily Plato and Aristotle, both of whom had a great deal to say about rhetoric and poetics. We will then seek to explore the presence of classical (and other: medieval, early modern, and neoclassical) rhetoric in at least four texts: Chaucer’s The Nun’s Priest’s Tale, Shakespeare’s Othello, Milton’s Paradise Lost (selections), and Swift’s A Modest Proposal. In the course’s second part, also about half a semester, we will bring our investigation of the nexus between rhetoric and poetics up to the present via texts that members of the class will choose. Students will also write a long essay on these texts of their own choosing.
This is a writing-intensive course that will feature regular class discussion. Required primary and secondary reading will all be available online and/or to download via Lamakū. They are not available from the UH Bookstore.
Course Requirements
Steady attendance and active participation
Informal writing assignments posted to the class’s Lamakū site
A midterm examination covering the first half of the course
A written and oral report on a chapter from the Conley course text
An oral report on the text that you have chosen for your long essay
An oral report on your long essay
A peer review of the long essay by someone else in the class
The long essay itself
A final examination
Required Secondary Texts (available online and on Lamakū)
Selections from Thomas M. Conley, Rhetoric in the European Tradition (1994).
Selections from Patricia Bizzell, Bruce Hertzberg, and Robin Reames, eds., The
Rhetorical Tradition: Readings From Classical Times to the Present, 3rd
edition (2020).